January 19 - Day 11

Another early morning. I woke up at 3:30 am when Erika sent me a text and it took me a while to get back to sleep but I still had a good night of sleep. We had our buffet at the hotel again, dressed for our bike ride, got our suitcases into the bus and headed out to where we will meet the company with the bikes.

It is a cool morning but more blue sky than clouds. By the time we got onto our bikes and received instructions, the sky is even more blue. So happy to see the sun. We are riding a trail called Alps2Ocean. It is a very long trail through New Zealand and we are riding one stretch of it. A bit into the ride and we could see the godly Mt. Cook! The ride was so beautiful. We rode along the shores of gorgeous turquoise Lake Pukaki with the mountain soaring in the background. Very idyllic and beautiful. The bike ride was a lot of fun, even with many stops. About halfway in, we stopped and had some sandwiches and rested a bit. Now the trail pulled away from the lake. It was still beautiful and Matt and I and one other guy started riding hard. We rode pretty hard the rest of the way. The ride was about 16 miles. We ended up back at the motel where we had a bit more lunch, changed clothes and got ready for the drive to Cromwell.

Of course, I went right to sleep. I was tired and I love to nap on the bus. The ride was about 2.5 hours long with one “comfort stop”. We got a wonderful ice cream cone, made in Bumpy style with a machine that blended fruit and frozen ice cream. Ours was guava and mango. Very delicious.

Arriving in Cromwell, the skies are blue and it is quite warm, although very windy. We checked into our motel and Matt and I headed out to explore. Not much to see in this town at all. But we walked an hour or so until it was time for dinner. 

Dinner tonight is pizza and salads. The food was good. It feels like my appetite is voracious and we are eating all the time. I didn’t even feel full after dinner. 

After dinner, we headed out to do a bit more walking and then came back to the hotel. I am so tired. So tired. Matt is exhausted too and he got quite sunburned today. Tomorrow is another very full day and we will get to see Queenstown.

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